10/30/08
Klo-new-a? Klo-NO-a is more like it. This is the proposed redesign for Namco's kid-friendly hero, and although it's not completely terrible, it looks like they stuffed an entirely different character into Klonoa's clothes. It looks like something an amateur furry artist would whip up after playing too much Kingdom Hearts. If you're not fond of the dopey new design, please let Namco know by clicking on Klonoa 2.0. He'll use his awkwardly positioned forefinger to point you to a survey, where you can register your disgust with the makers of the series.
10/02/08
Holy nuts! There's some great footage of the recently announced DSi (yeeeeeOW!) on Kotaku. Man, if they had shown all those fantastic games at the last Electronic Entertainment Expo, people would have been singing Nintendo's praises rather than cursing its name for the last three months. The RPG fans alone have plenty to get excited about, with Kingdom Hearts, Chrono Trigger, Shining Force, Mario and Luigi, and several flavors of Final Fantasy all scheduled for release in the near future.
"But what about the hardware?," you ask (assuming that you're even here to ask that question). Well, the DSi represents a pretty big change from the previous two units in a number of ways. First, the bad news... the rumors that the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot would be kicked to the curb turned out to be right on the money. It's gone for good, just as Game Boy Color support was dropped from later models of the Game Boy Advance. If you have an older flash cartridge or one of those cart-based peripherals, you'd better hold onto your current DS, because the new unit won't take them.
Now for the improvements, and there are a lot of them! The DSi includes not one, but two cameras. The first is set on the system's hinge, allowing you to interact with specially designed games. The second, set in the back of the top screen, has a much sharper resolution and lets you take snapshots of your friends. Then there's the greatly expanded BIOS... previous systems gave you rudimentary features like a clock and Pictochat, but the new DS offers PDA-like functionality, with an MP3 player and web browser. It's probably safe to assume that the DSi has extra RAM built in to accommodate these two features, since the previous two handhelds required a cartridge to surf the web.
The DSi also has an SD card slot, which leads us to its most surprising new feature... Internet commerce. You'll be able to download games and other content from Nintendo's servers, which opens up intriguing possibilities for gamers as well as ample opportunities for Nintendo to shake its loyal user base for every last dime. The downloadable content ranges in price from free (gee, my favorite!) to 200, 500, and even 800 points. The thought of a download service for the DS doesn't sound all that enticing... after all, if Wii Ware games are scaled down from their retail counterparts, how much more simplified would a DS download be? However, it does open the door a tiny crack for Game Boy Advance titles, which would otherwise be inaccessible on the DSi.
So that's what you can expect from the latest Nintendo DS. It's dropped the backward compatibility, but gained a lot of nifty gadgets and gimmicks that expand the scope of the system. It's starting to move into convergence territory, an approach that didn't work so well for the PSP but may actually pay dividends for Nintendo. If it doesn't, they can always do what they did with the Game Boy Micro and pretend it never existed!
